Although the spacing is better, it does feel a bit odd that they're in the middle of the window now.

Another option might be to keep the original one-row layout but move some of the buttons under a dropdown, e.g. Location and Rename as a dropdown under the Accepts/Ratings toggle.

This a bit of a wildcard suggestion, but would it be an idea to have (some) buttons in a vertical row on the right, like the depots and vehicles have? It's more or less the route that Chris Sawyer took with RCT and RCT2.

There is also the option of introducing tabs here - again, something CS did himself. Though CS only used tabs that took up the entire window.

(I hope you don't mind a filthy OpenRCT2 team member coming over to your turf :P)

Well someone would have to draw art for those vertical buttons :)

Sure, but you have a graphic for "Location" (the one on the vehicle window). "Rename" can use the sign icon, which only leaves "Close airport". Should be feasible if you end up opting for this route. :)

Okay more radical ideas inspired by @Gymnasiast which I haven't attempted yet:

• Do add a viewport to the window, perhaps zoomed out by a level (same as industries?)
• Vertical row of buttons right of the viewport: Location, Rename, Show Coverage (needs new icon?), Close Airport (needs new icon?)
• Table of cargo types handled at station in a pane below the viewport and button row: Shows all cargoes supplied and accepted at the station in a table view. Columns are cargo name/icon, currently waiting amount, supply rating (if supplied, blank if not), accepted (dot if yes, blank if not).
• Rows unfold similar to current to display source/via/destination data.
• Cargo types that could be supplied but have not been picked up/do not have a rating could also participate in the table, perhaps shown dimmed. Perhaps also a way to show cargo types with partial acceptance?
• Not sure what to do with the sorting/grouping buttons for the cargo list.

Okay more radical ideas

Sounds interesting. After playing Locomotion I never understood, why the station window of (Open)-TTD has no viewport window. In Open-TTD vehicles, towns and industries have one, only the stations have no viewport window. So the viewport window would not only be "looking nice" but would also be a harmonisation.

The vertical row of buttons, borrowed from RCT and Locomotion, should, if implemented, IMHO be a general UI element not only for the station window.

The vertical row of buttons has always been in the vehicle window, since TTO. The main argument against using it in more places is, I think, that you need art for the buttons, so you can't add a new button without either art already existing, or someone to draw it.

Poor sketch of my above idea:

The 3rd vertical button is supposed to be a tile with some outlined tiles surrounding it, representing coverage area. The 4th vertical button is supposed to be an aircraft with a red cross over it, representing airport closure.
The symbol next to two of the cargo lines is supposed to be an arrow pointing to a platform, indicating that the station accepts the cargo. An alternative could be a fully filled circle, and partially accepted cargo types could optionally then be represented as a partial pie, along with the line being grayed out.
The group/sort buttons are still problematic, maybe they need to be in a foldable pane, or even as a child window.

Oh, that looks like a very nice layout!

As for the sort and group buttons/dropdowns: why not put those above the cargo lines? It's where they are on lists of vehicles, for example.

Attempted adding a viewport, using placeholders for some of the button icons:

The viewport becomes rather flat-looking with just 4 buttons, but there aren't any more things possible to add to vertical buttons, save maybe jamming the four "list vehicles stopping at station" buttons into a single space.
Vertical buttons just don't work that well anyway.

Attempted the quad-button, this definitely does not work. (Also tried the window in 1x GUI zoom.)

The viewport doesn't necessarily need to be as tall as the space that the vertical button take up. In RCT, there is often some blank space left over under (or above) the vertical buttons:

I don't think the viewport code in OTTD supports (easily) hiding a viewport like RCT does when switching tab, so the viewport couldn't be resizable because the details list below it would be the resizable part.

Right, but I'm not talking about resizing - what I mean is that you could leave some room blank below the vertical row of four buttons so that the viewport can be bigger.

I don't think the viewport code in OTTD supports (easily) hiding a viewport like RCT does when switching tab

The window code in RCT is quite complicated, and so is OpenRCT2's, since we haven't yet done much about it. Our code was actually partially taken from OpenTTD 0.1.

With this PR, I think some players will want to be able to revert to the old style, so could you add the following two settings for that?

1. A setting to change whatever the cargos are arranged the classic way (how it is now) or in a tabular form (name, waiting, supply, rating, accepted)?
2. A setting to disable the viewport (how it is now), enable the viewport without the vertical buttons, or enable the viewport with the vertical buttons. When vertical buttons are disabled, the two-line button layout originally proposed will be used (Accepts, Ratings, Coverage, Vehicles, [\n], Location, Rename, Close Airport), but both lines will be at the bottom of the window.

Additionally, how are you gonna handle CargoDist destinations while in the tabular form?

To start spawning settings for UI elements here and there is IMHO not a good idea. If one setting exists, someone will want to have another one for another UI and someone will want to have another one ... it's a bit like a sisyphean job.

More possible ways to go:

• Make three tabs instead of two: Waiting, Planned, Service.
• Waiting shows the currently waiting cargo and its destinations/via.
• Planned shows cargo routed to/via the station by cargodist.
• Service shows combined accepts, ratings, supplies.
• Waiting and Planned at currently switched by the Sort By dropdown which has its functionality overloaded in a non-obvious way.
• This cuts the window down to a single text/table pane.
• It could also allow "serviced" cargos to be sorted, e.g. by name, rating, supply since the Sort button is free'd up in the Service view.
• The Coverage button could (but should it?) be an insert in the Service view instead of a "main" button.
• Switching tabs could be done by a dropdown button, but having a button for each tab (similar to vehicle details window) is probably best.
• Rename and Location really would fit better as title bar buttons, however that should, (1) be a separate patch, (2) be carefully considered with the existing clutter of window management buttons.

I don't think I'm getting any further with this myself. Unless someone wants to vouch for the original idea here (shown in the initial post) this should just be closed.
Some of the other ideas might make for separate PRs later.